Oolite Bulletins

After 2 days of ironing out the bugs and adding the ELS holotunnel, here it is, the final version of the Griffified System Stations. Stations show up where they should now and the holotunnel is no longer a threat to ships, you can now actually fly through it unharmed - Thank you again Griff - Issues have been solved thanks to some enthusiastic modders here on the BB. Thank you gentlemen.

- Another thing I want to mention, which is not in the readme is that this oxp is NOT compatible with PaGrooves stations alas. I have thought about doing that, but the number of different stations combined with the conditions were starting to become a real pain to accomplish let alone test.

Download : http://www.box.net/shared/k0uv6h9op2


Screens.

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ELS OFF





ELS ON







README

*** Z-GrOovY paintshed (Ze Griff's Ooniversal vinYl paintshed) presents ***

Z_GrOovy_System_Stations.oxp {1.0} 02-mar-2011
Z_GrOovy_System_Stations_ELS_Option.oxp

*** Contents ***

Right, after a few days of tinkering with the code that almost drove me nuts, here's the result:


- 5 Stations using Griff's same texture and detail as his excellent existing Coriolis Station. Station choice is governed by a planet's production quota.

You will now find:

- Tetrahedron Depots: Small station found in systems with a GBP below 4032 Million C.
- Octahedron Outposts: Medium station found in systems with a GBP between 4032 and 6999 Million C.
- Coriolis Stations: Large (most common) station found in most systems and a GBP of 7000 and more.
- Dodecahedron Stations: XL station found in tech systems 10 and above chosen by game mechanics and not bound to GBP
- Icosahederon Stations: XXL station found in tech systems 10 and above chosen by game mechanics and not bount to GBP

*** Optional for rigs with shaders ***

ELS system add-on FOR COMMANDERS WITH A COMPUTER THAT SUPPORTS SHADERS ONLY.

The ELS system (Elite Landing System) is a kind of glideslope ILS system as invented on earth in the 20 th century. It projects a holo of 5 beacons in front of the station's docking bay and indicates the ideal flight and alignment path. The markers are well spaced and shouldn't be a problem for pilots comfortable with manual station approaches. Hitting any of the beacons with your craft in the old days used to be punished by instant death. This is however not the case anymore and those days are only remembered when an old spacer refers to it as the "Corridor Of Death". The harshness of the penalty was enforced to discourage rocket-jockeys and rookies to disregard traffic regulations at busier starports.

*** Changes to the 3D models ***

- Tetrahedron and Octahedron stations built from scratch, added details ad texture from Griff's coriolis station
- The Coriolis station is a clone from Griffs so no changes have been made visually, exept that it will not show up in systems with a GBP lower than 7000 not including. This means for the canon people that some planets like Lave, Zaonce and Tionisla for example still have their "vanilla" stations, and since I didn't want to change the gameplay too much visually I put the poverty barrier at 7000 Million Cr.
- The Dodecahedron station is a modified model from Kapt Kev and Griff's station (the baydoor has been realigned and rotated 17.5 degrees, which tidies the model up a bit, something Gibbon put me up to do), and has the details and textures from Griff's Coriolis station.
- The Icosahedron station is a model from PaGroove, and has been scaled up together with its docking bay with a factor of 35% to make it the biggest station in the Ooniverse. Don't worry it's only marginally visible and doesnt break the gameplay at all.




*** Debugging ? ***

Found something I can fix ? leave me a message on the Oolite BB, and I'll see what I can do.

*** Credits ***
A big thank you to:

- Giles Williams and contributors for Oolite.
- Griff for the texture and details on his Coriolis AND for making the ELS system as a seperate oxp I could convert in a heartbeat. Thank you Sir !
- Commander Mac Lane for taking the time to explain the game mechanics of station population in great detail.
- Thargoid for taking up the challenge of writing a docking tunnel with regular flashers (which alas wasn't possible scripting wise and didn't make it ingame as intended)
- PaGroove for the model of his Icosahedron station.
- Griff and Kapt Kev for the model of his Dodo station.
- All the other enthusiasts on the forum.

*** Dependables/Requirements ***

NONE, yes I repeat, NO other addons are necessary, they are based on Griff's work but everything is included in the download.

*** Installation ***

- A) Copy Z_GrOovy_System_Stations.oxp folder into the addons folder of your Oolite installation. (This will give you the 5 stations WITHOUT ELS)

- B) Copy both Z_GrOovy_System_Stations.oxp folder AND Z_GrOovy_System_Stations_ELS_Option.oxp into your addons folder (This will give you 5 stations WITH ELS)


*** Legal bollox ***

This oxp is free to use, distribute, and following files in the "models" folder can be altered, changed, enhanced etc...without my permission.

- S-station.dat
- M-station.dat

All other files, if unsure please contact their respective creators.

As for my stuff, it can however not be used in any commercial product and cannot be sold. It is free software and should only cost you download time. I am not in any way liable if your break your Oolite installation using this oxp. Use at your own risk. I have successfully tested it and it works 4 me.
Enjoy.

Steve

*** Z-GrOovY paintshed - Showing you new ways on how to be seen ***

Very good dertien... I especially like the dodo. They'll fit my Griffiverse nicely.

Awesome work again.

Will it work with PAGrooves stations OXP?

The Octo station looks nice. It's a good addition to the existing shapes.

Out of the five platonic solids we're now only missing the tetrahedron and the cube as station designs. But of course the cube is a little boring, and the tetrahedron quite small as a design.

Given that the Octo is smaller than the other designs, it makes sense to make it into the default station for a certain type of systems. I'm just not sure that it would be anarchies, and that the criterion would be the political constitution. In the Elite canon the stations are property of GalCop. They are extraterritorial to the planet, and the planetary governments have nothing to do with them (for instance they haven't paid for them).

Just a suggestion: You could tie them instead to the planet's GDP. I don't think it has been used before as a criterion. But it would make sense to assume that planets with a small GDP also have a small trade volume, and GalCop would only set up a small outpost.

TGHC wrote:

Awesome work again.

Will it work with PAGrooves stations OXP?

Always a pleasure Gentlemen.

The problem is that for some reason stations are a real pain to make em show up with the skin or at all.

Like for example in Biarge there is an isocahedron station which would show up nicely, but the same icosahedron would just show the Oolite vanilla one in Zaonce. I had to change the code once or twice to make it work for both. I've been flying around and testing stuff with the excellent tools (long range scanner and oocheat) and so far all stations show up as they should, where they should.

Adding Pagrooves would not be a walk in the park. Playing with the conditions in the shipdata.plist files of one station can have a totally unpredictable effect on any other.

So to answer your question, at the moment, no they dont work together.

Commander McLane wrote:

The Octo station looks nice. It's a good addition to the existing shapes.

Out of the five platonic solids we're now only missing the tetrahedron and the cube as station designs. But of course the cube is a little boring, and the tetrahedron quite small as a design.

Given that the Octo is smaller than the other designs, it makes sense to make it into the default station for a certain type of systems. I'm just not sure that it would be anarchies, and that the criterion would be the political constitution. In the Elite canon the stations are property of GalCop. They are extraterritorial to the planet, and the planetary governments have nothing to do with them (for instance they haven't paid for them).

Just a suggestion: You could tie them instead to the planet's GDP. I don't think it has been used before as a criterion. But it would make sense to assume that planets with a small GDP also have a small trade volume, and GalCop would only set up a small outpost.

Well I just followed common logic since the coriolis was the smallest and most abundant in the bunch I added the Octo a stage lower since both other stations can be found in richer and more stable systems. It is however not possible to bind it to techlevel and binding them to GDP is beyond my scripting ability, but sure if their is a parameter in the shipdata.plist file that will bind it to GDP, then that would be great.

dertien wrote:

Well I just followed common logic since the coriolis was the smallest and most abundant in the bunch I added the Octo a stage lower since both other stations can be found in richer and more stable systems. It is however not possible to bind it to techlevel and binding them to GDP is beyond my scripting ability, but sure if their is a parameter in the shipdata.plist file that will bind it to GDP, then that would be great.

You already have a condition based on systemGovernment_number but you can also use in the same way:

"systemGovernment_number", "systemEconomy_number", "systemTechLevel_number", "systemPopulation_number", "systemProductivity_number".

Eric Walch wrote:

dertien wrote:

Well I just followed common logic since the coriolis was the smallest and most abundant in the bunch I added the Octo a stage lower since both other stations can be found in richer and more stable systems. It is however not possible to bind it to techlevel and binding them to GDP is beyond my scripting ability, but sure if their is a parameter in the shipdata.plist file that will bind it to GDP, then that would be great.

You already have a condition based on systemGovernment_number but you can also use in the same way:

"systemGovernment_number", "systemEconomy_number", "systemTechLevel_number", "systemPopulation_number", "systemProductivity_number".

Hi Eric, thanks for the post, where do I find the values for the Population number and the productivity number since I could only find the first two here:

http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Shipdata.plist

dertien wrote:

[Hi Eric, thanks for the post, where do I find the values for the Population number and the productivity number since I could only find the first two here:

http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Shipdata.plist

The wiki is currently down and those variables are buried in some very old sections for of it, but in the system section must those data be available. You can also target a system and go to the F7 screen. The script uses the same values, only with the decimal point at a different place.
But try in the console: expandDescription("[systemPopulation_number]") and it will return the values it will actually use for the current system. You'll find out the difference with the F7 screen in no time than.
(2.4 billion inhabitants returns as 24 )

Eric Walch wrote:

dertien wrote:

[Hi Eric, thanks for the post, where do I find the values for the Population number and the productivity number since I could only find the first two here:

http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Shipdata.plist

The wiki is down and those variables are buried in some very old sections for of it, but in the system section must those data be available. You can also target a system and go to the F7 screen. The script uses the same values, only with the decimal point at a different place.
But try in the console: expandDescription("[systemPopulation_number]") and it will return the values it will actually use for the current system. You'll find out the difference with the F7 screen in no time than.

Well its good to learn something every day. Thank you for that.

dertien wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

In the Elite canon the stations are property of GalCop.

Can you tell me what the Elite Canon means ( is this like some kind of fan fiction) Google hasn't been to helpful on the topic either.

dertien wrote:

Can you tell me what the Elite Canon means

Now there's a question... 'canon' refers to things that are generally accepted as correct in a work of fiction.
Most Oolite/Elite canon comes from the Elite manual and The Dark Wheel, but I'm no expert.

dertien wrote:

Hi Eric, thanks for the post, where do I find the values for the Population number and the productivity number since I could only find the first two here:

http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Shipdata.plist

The others are possibly not documented yet. I can't check, because the Wiki is down.

However, I can tell you that systemProductivity_number is exactly the number as it appears on the F7-screen. (It's not coded like systemEconomy_number or systemGovernment_number). You can use the plain number.

What I can't tell you, though, is what the actual range in Oolite is. You'd have to fly around a little and note down GDPs of various planets, in order to get a feeling what is a low value and what is a high value. And then you just use systemProductivity_number lessthan [i]<reasonable threshold number>[/i].

I think you'll find out that systemProductivity_number and systemPopulation_number are quite closely linked, which makes some sense.

If you want GDP's of planets, ClymAngus' Vector Maps have that... and they're beautiful.

Edit: the link has changed... these are better.

El Viejo wrote:

dertien wrote:

Can you tell me what the Elite Canon means

Now there's a question... 'canon' refers to things that are generally accepted as correct in a work of fiction.
Most Oolite/Elite canon comes from the Elite manual and The Dark Wheel, but I'm no expert.

Ok, makes sense thanks EV